Sramana Mitra: Can you tell the story of how the company was founded and develop the story fully? Alexandre Wentzo: When I joined them in the UK, they were working in Central London in a small flat. They were keen on the French market at that time because the economy was a bit better than
Alex tells the story of a bootstrapped company from London that has gone all the way to $10 million in just over 10 years and is now looking to scale further, perhaps with outside capital. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Tell us where you’re from, where you were born, raised,
Kurt has tried different permutations and combinations of bootstrapping, several of them successfully. Listen to his perspective on each of those. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Kurt Long: I was raised in Clearwater, Florida. I grew up in
Sramana Mitra: What are the nuggets of what you were going to do differently and how you were going to do them differently? Andrew Rubin: Very simply put, our industry has been dominated by hardware- and network-based solutions for over 20 years. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. It’s just that it was the singular approach. Our
Sramana Mitra: When you started to get this thing off the ground, anecdotally and structurally, what were the next steps? Andrew Rubin: PJ and I probably first had to figure out whether or not we like each other enough to spend more time together. I know that sounds silly now in hindsight, but when you
Sramana Mitra: How has your revenue ramped from the 2007 time frame to 2015? Where are you now? Chris Grandi: We’re growing over 50% per year. In year one, we started our revenue with less than a million dollars. You grow a 100% when your revenue is smaller. Our revenue is significantly bigger now but we’re
Sramana Mitra: What did you do in the Valley? Andrew Rubin: In every sense of the word, people talk about luck, timing, and fate being not everything, but an important part of the story. Sramana Mitra: It’s a very big thing. Andrew Rubin: It’s an incredibly important part of the story in my case. While
Sramana Mitra: You seem to be enjoying the process of starting something, figuring a niche, and getting it to a certain amount of revenue. The first one you scaled to $50 million in revenue, which was a substantial amount of revenue. It sounds like you like to figure it out and then sell the company. Is